This is a guest post by James Hewson from FreshEgg.com . In this post today, he reveals what HE DOES to increase click-through rate for his links when doing article marketing. I am sure enough that using his method, you would definitely achieve results like him.
For many years now, internet marketers have turned to article marketing to answer a couple of their website SEO needs. By writing a quality article and submitting it to one of the authoritative article directories (ezinearticles.com PR6, goarticles.com PR6) you will receive in return, one or two do follow back links to your website.
Links from powerful authoritative domains will help to earn your website some respect and therefore gradually, increases in search engine placement.
Steady Flow of Website Visitors
Given the authority of the domains which your articles sit, many thousands of visitors will visit the site each day in addition to visitors reaching your article from the search engines. If you have targeted the correct key terms which users are searching for, the chances are you will receive a nice flow of visitors to your article. The biggest hurdle most article writers face is getting the visitor to click upon the link within the author resource box at the bottom of the article.
If you have ever embarked upon any form of article marketing you will be aware of this problem which is extremely frustrating. There are a couple of principal reasons why writers experience very poor click-through rates (CTR) for their respective articles.
- Article Directory Site Design – One of the biggest hurdles to overcome is the site design itself – both leading article directories are designed for maximum CTR for their own ads and are not designed to encourage readers to the bottom of the page and your resource box.
- Poor Article Direction – When you are writing an article for directory submission your principal aim should be to draw the reader in (and away from the site ads) whilst taking them upon a journey.
This is where I turned around my article CTR’s from a measly 1-3% to a massive 20-45%!
The methodology is not difficult at all to grasp but once you do, you will see instant results. Remember that people need to be absorbed and drawn into the subject matter. You need to create a mindset of a small hill in your writing; you are leading them up the face of the hill and once at the top, begin to move quickly downhill towards the answers they are looking for.
Create A Structure For Your Writing With An;
1. Introduction (foot of the hill) – capture your reader at the outset, outline what you are going to do and how at the end (which is where your link is) you will reveal just how their problem (if it is a problem) can be solved.
2. Middle (the climb to the top of the hill) – This is where the main content is – ensure you do not give all the secrets away. You want to provide the reader just enough content to keep them sustained but not so much as they have found exactly what they were looking for and leave (without clicking your link).
3. Finale (gentle jog down the other side) – Now you have raised the reader to the top of your hill it’s time to take them by the hand and run down telling them all the while the answers lay just ahead (your link).
It really is as simple as that. By adapting these principles and the ‘hill mindset’ and they can be applied to just about any subject, my article CTR’s went immediately up. I generally never see any CTR’s less than 20% in all my writings now and armed with the above, can you as well.
Do let me know your thoughts on this method. I would like to know, what’s the average click-through rate you usually see for your articles? Is it good? Is it BAD? Are you happy with it? And do you have any technique that you use and would like to share with us that helps you getting great results with article marketing (if you do)?
Then what are you looking for?!! Hey! What? The comment form is below…Don’t you see it? I am waiting for your comment. 😉
start is the most imp…..if i talk abt myself, my start is such that either it seems so kool or it appears so vague int rying to be kool 😆 so i guess start is the most imp thing…moroever logn paras shud be avoided..how boring 😐 hmm we can like keep users waiting for soemthing till the end…that can help maybe 🙄
Now, that there are some reports that article submission is ranking first in terms of Google’s algorithm it is necessary to have the best content. Thanks for the tips here it will help me a lot.
We can hardly keep our self away from spam, because articles directories have too much spam these days.
like directories who dont have auto approve have too much adds, and those who have auto approval have too much spam articles, i sent some articles to goarticles and hardly got 2-3 views on them
You are absolutely right. I personally use 2 methods to increase my CTR:
1- I put my conclusion in my bio so readers continue reading until they see the link.
2- I sometimes split my article into 2 parts, i submit the (part 1) to article directories and leave a link to part 2 in my bio. If you didn’t provide the reader with everything, he OR she will click on that link to learn more and complete the rest of the article
Thank you all for you comments (James Hewson here, the writer of this post) – I am glad you liked the article. I tend to abide by the ockams razor approach to most things – being the simplest answer is usually the best; the same applies to IM in general. Keep it simple and straight forward for the reader and you will benefit. Would be interesting to see what average CTR’s are though, as I thought that my 20-30% was good but I could be wrong on that!
Article Writing is really a art. Promoting product in article is very difficult. And now a days, many people don’t have time to participate in article reading. Giving the link in the end of the post is tricky one. And it should be in a manner, which visitors need to get attracted.
You have written a good post regarding this. Keep it up.
Nice tips for increasing click through rates. Writing for audience always helps
Writing quality articles is definitely a great way to increase your website’s traffic. However in order to create quality articles you need to know exactly how to write them. In my opinion the link in most of the cases should be place at the end of your writing. The article should have a basic introduction about what exactly you are writing and a good description regarding the subject that you have chosen.
I’m not an avid reader but writing, I guess, is a skill and we sharpen it each time we sit down and practice. I agree, that we should not spill all the secrets right away, but I don’t like stories which plays suspense for too long. Its important to get our point across to the readers and in order to do that we need to keep them engrossed from the title to the conclusion. The writing techniques discussed in this post sounds perfect to me.
It is reality , all article directories are designed according to their own business. our links have secondary importance.Because of main focus of all internet marketers we get some clicks from these directories.